Do all Zebras look alike to you?
They are all white with black stripes. But Scientists can identify individual zebras by “scanning” their stripes like a barcode.
The ‘Stripespotter’ is a scanning system developed to identify individual zebras from a single picture.
This system is so accurate; it can be used on other striped animals like tigers and giraffes.
Scientific Explanation for Zebra Stripes
The field ecologists take pictures of zebras with their regular cameras. These pictures are then loaded on the database of the Stripespotter. A portion of the picture is highlighted by the scientists, say the hind leg. This highlighted area is scanned by the Stripespotter and assigned a ‘stripecode’. Each animal has a unique stripecode.
When other pictures of the animals are loaded and other parts highlighted, the Stripespotter finds it in the database and gives a matching result. It also provides a feedback as to why the two images are of the same zebra.